John Henry Newman

“ Who tears the soul from out its case,
And burns away its stains!
[57]
Angel
They sing of thy approaching agony,
Which thou so eagerly didst question of:
It is the face of the Incarnate God
Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;
720And yet the memory which it leaves will be
A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;
And yet withal it will the wound provoke,
And aggravate and widen it the more. Soul
Thou speakest mysteries ”

“ John, who was of the Gordon family, died in 1875, and Newman suffered what he held to be his saddest bereavement. Ambrose St. John had been with him at Littlemore. Writing to Mr. Dering of the death of Father Ambrose St. John, he said: "I never had so great a loss. He had been my life under God for twenty-two years." The dread of dying alone and the deep affection for friends—an affection that reaches the throne of God by prayer—tinge the whole structure of "The Dream." ”

“ It is more than that; it is the realization by means of a loving heart and a poetic imagination of the state of a just soul after death,—Gerontius typifying not the soul of a particular person imagined by Cardinal Newman, but your soul, my soul, any soul which may be fortunate enough to satisfy the judging and merciful God. No poet has ever presented the condition of the soul, as made known by the theology of the Catholic Church, so forcibly and appealingly as Cardinal Newman. ”

“ To live as one, will not upbraid
The dread to die alone."
The death of Gerontius was Newman's ideal Christian death, and Gerontius does not die alone; he is upborne, refreshed by the prayers of his friends. ”

“ The "vision" of which he speaks he saw everywhere, and all his poems seem, in one way or other, to contain hints of the great poem to come; for there can be no doubt that "The Dream of Gerontius" is the culmination of his poetical moods. One cannot open any of his prose works without finding allusions to these eternal truths made so clear through the processes of the soul of a normal old man,—our young readers will please look up the derivation of Gerontius, [9] which is from the Greek,—but it is in his poems that we discover easily [14] the germs of his poetical masterpiece. ”

“ Gerontius is yet in the body, and the rime, used solemnly, marks a difference—which has a delicate symbolism—between his utterances in the body and his utterances when his soul has left the body. What we call blank verse is used by the Spirit—rime disappears, but the rhythm remains the same. Using verse-notation, we find five accented notes in each line, if we consider the lines at all. There are two quarter-notes in each bar, which may be written as
[12] (p. 25.) Gerontius dreams that he is dying. He has not strength to pray. ”

“ The soul wonders why it cannot move hand or foot, and the angel says:
"Nor hast thou now extension, with its parts
Correlative,—long habit cozens thee,—
Nor power to move thyself, nor limbs to move."
[6]
So infinitesimal has the time been since the soul left the body that the "Subvenite" is not yet finished when the soul is at the very throne of Judgment:
"I hear the voices that I left on earth." ”

“ The assistants by the bedside redouble their supplications in the sacred words of the Litany for the Dying, which Cardinal Newman again interprets in English verse, though the Litany is in the Latin tongue. Again, the soul gains strength for a moment, and calls, in the universal speech of the Church, for strength, and that, "out of the depths," [3] the holy God might save it. Then it uses its will to believe, and within itself asserts the creed of the Church, which is musically interpreted by the poet ”

“ For Newman has been a sign to this generation that unless there is a great deal of the loneliness of death in life, there can hardly be much of the higher equanimity of life in death. To my mind 'The Dream of Gerontius' is the poem of a man to whom the vision of the Christian revelation has at all times been more real, more potent to influence action, and more powerful to preoccupy the imagination than all worldly interests put together. ”

“ The passing of the soul may not have occupied a second, as we reckon time, and yet, as "The Dream of Gerontius" suggests, the soul, sensitive and vital, may live through what might seem to be a hundred years. As soon as it appears that the soul has departed, the priest says:
"Subvenite, Sancti Dei, occurrite Angeli Domini, [5] Suscipientes animam ejus, Offerentes eam in conspectu Altissimi." [4]
This prayer dwells last in the ears of Gerontius. He has slept for a moment, refreshed by the Church, and he awakes to find himself free. ”

“ The Litany is too long for the purpose of the poem, and the author has translated into English some of the invocations that would naturally strike the "fainting soul." "Be merciful" ("Propitius esto") , the assistants continue, still using parts of the Litany as versified by Cardinal Newman.
[13] "Kyrie Eleïson," etc. The poet has retained the sound-form used in the Prayer-books, and he shows his musical taste by not changing it.
[14] "Rouse thee," etc. Gerontius concentrates all his vitality. The effect is of nervous energy. The time is quickened and alternately slowed. ”

“ Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile,"—
he says, quoting Keble, that poets are "not bound to be critics or to give a sense to what they had written," [8] and he adds that "there must be a statute of limitations, or it would be quite a tyranny, if in an art which is the expression not of truth but of imagination and sentiment, one were obliged to stand an examination on the transient state of mind which came [10] upon one when homesick, or seasick, or in any other way sensitive or excited." ”

“ As a rule, when Cardinal Newman's poetry is mentioned, people think of "The Pillar of the Cloud," better known as "Lead, Kindly Light." This lyric is only one of the many beautiful poems written by an author whose fame as a writer of the finest modern prose in the English language has eclipsed his reputation as a poet. Nevertheless, he wrote a very great poem, "The Dream of Gerontius"—a poem which the intellectual world admires more and more every year, and which yields its best only after careful study and consideration. It has been described as a metrical meditation on death. ”

“ The delicacy of his ear as to sounds is shown by the changes of the verse-music,—which is made up of accent, pause, and rhythm,—to fit the varying feeling of the work. If the student will scan the lines and reduce them to musical expression,—leaving out, of course, the quality of pitch, he can easily corroborate this. [B]
This is in two-beat rhythm: [C]
The first syllable of "Jesu" is the anacrusis; the measure of the metre begins with the first accent. Whether this system of verse-notation or that of the usual scansion be followed, the meaning of the changing forms will be made plain. ”

“ It is thy very energy of thought
Which keeps thee from thy God. ”

“ Cry 'Subvenite,' and they knelt in prayer." [5]
The soul, borne forward on its way to the Judge, hears the song of its Guardian Angel, whose work is done. As the soul proceeds, the voices of the demons are heard; they express the pride of those who defy God. ”

“ In 1854 went to Dublin as rector of the newly founded Irish Catholic University, but resigned that post in 1858, and subsequently established a boys' school at Birmingham.
In 1864 Charles Kingsley made charges of untruthfulness against the Catholic clergy, which led to the writing of the Apologia Pro Vita Sua.
In December, 1877, was elected an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
In 1865 he printed "The Dream of Gerontius."
In 1879 created Cardinal Deacon of the Holy Roman Church by Leo XIII.
On Monday, August 11, 1890, died at the Oratory, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. ”

“ The system of verse-notation will be found more satisfactory in the metrical study of the poem. The second form of primary rhythm—that based on three beats in the measure— [20] is effectively used. We find it in the Song of the Demons:
[21]
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Born in the city of London, February 21, 1801, son of Mr. John Newman (of the banking firm of Ramsbottom, Newman & Co.) and of Jemima Fourdrinier, his wife.
Went at an early age to Dr. Nicholas's school at Ealing, to the head of which he rapidly rose. Thence to Trinity College, Oxford, graduating in 1820. ”